Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Regional development continues to preoccupy the new
breed of Tanzanian politicians. It appears in a
recent book on January Makamba’s answers. A
new book on Zitto Kabwe’s key speeches/articles and his online
debates addresses it. So does Hamisi Kigwangalla’s new
book.

What I find perplexing is the ongoing politicization
of statistics. It is one thing to present statistics on unequal regional
development and quite another to politicize them. The latter is so problematic
in the context of Regionalism
and Factionalism in Multiparty Politics.

In other words, these three regions are Tanzania’s
‘outliers’ – they are ‘way beyond the national average’ as if they don’t belong
to the country. The report even refers to them as the “most prosperous” and
among the “five wealthiest” regions in Tanzania. On a general level i.e. what
statisticians may say ‘on average’, the level of human development of the people
living there is more or less as that of the people in Malaysia and Mauritius.

Being the melting pot of Tanzania’s ethnic groups from
all 30 regions, Dar es Salaam is often let off the hook. It is Arusha and
Kilimanjaro that are left in the hot seat. Why?

Numbers ‘don’t lie’, do they? The bone of contention
comes from these figures in the THDR2014: Arusha and Kilimanjaro’s regional shares
of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is 4.77% and 4.54% yet their HDI ranks are
number 1 and 2, respectively. Note that the report defines the regional share
of GDP as the “percentage contribution of a region to the total GDP (national
GDP).” But it is also important to note that Arusha’s regional share of total
tax is 4.33%, second to Dar es Salaam with its enormous 81.4%.

Economist-cum-Politician Zitto underscores
that Arusha and Kilimanjaro are number 7 and 9, respectively, in their
contribution to the national GDP even though they are among the three regions
with more development. When queried about the regional shares of total tax,
which THDR2014 defines as the “percentage contribution of a region to the total
tax collected in the country”, he clarified that it is different from the regional
share of GDP thus sustaining his query on why, relatively, Kilimanjaro contributes very
little to Tanzania’s GDP while it is ranked number 2 in terms of the human
development index of the people residing there.

Honest as all this might truly be, such queries, when
not coupled with sustained historical and political analyses, are a fodder for ‘regionalism’
and ‘tribalism’. This is especially the case when they are uttered hastily and/or
carelessly in political podiums and parochial platforms. It is also the case
when they are reported – in colorful documents – out of their (historical) contexts.

For sure, and to his credit, Zitto has at least attempted
to analyze why the numbers are the way they are, albeit cursorily, on his
facebook. But a close examination of the debate in the social media, such as
the one going on in the exclusive
arena for Jamii Forum’s Great Thinkers, indicates that any lack of critical,
in-depth analysis only adds to the confusion that can easily ferment
parochialism especially when such a politician is on the record for publicizing
a particular region and feeding the discourse of belonging to a certain region.

Zitto’s mentor, Seithy Chachage wrote a Masters’ dissertation
on ‘The Development of Urban Capitalism
in Tanzania (With an Example of Arusha Town)’ way back in 1983. This is
what he had to say: “From the research, it was evident that the development of
Arusha town is not simply a regional phenomenon, in the sense that it has been
developed by the indigenous people of Arusha region; but part of a national
phenomenon.”

Chachage thus continued his presentation: “This fact
is clearly discernible from the nationality composition of the town
population, whereby there is a numerical dominance of people from Kilimanjaro
and the Central Tanzania regions.” These and other findings of his that are
revisited herein are useful in the sense that they help us to understand the (historical)
antecedents to what we are observing today when we look at all the dazzling THDR2014
statistics of how Arusha and Kilimanjaro are among the ‘big five’ in adult
literacy, pass rates in primary education, income tax and the Gender
Development Index (GDI).

Of course Chachage was focusing on Arusha town and
Manyara region had not yet been formed. By 1998 the patterns in his observation
had hardly changed as this
profile from the Planning Commission and the Regional Commissioner’s Office
indicates: “Arusha region shows a very high net inward movement of people of
141,724 second to that of Dar-es- Salaam region of 500,621 net migration. Such
direction of movement indicates movement of people in search of new farming areas
or employed jobs. Arusha town due to its large number of manufacturing
establishments has tended to attract many people.”

My professor of Economics, Nathan Nunn, cautioned me
about the importance of dividing any development index with its respective ‘historical
population’ when I was so excited about comparing the role of the variation of regional
development in reproducing elites in Tanzania. I think the population is one of
the keys to understanding the comparative economic history of Arusha and Kilimanjaro and
why the people there may not appear as contributing much to the national GDP
relative to what they have and in comparison to other regions.

GDP “per Capita” is aptly defined in THDR2014 as “GDP
divided by population” and it “represents the average resources available to
each individual in the population.” In the case of Arusha, ranked number 3, it is
Tsh 1,258,334. For Kilimanjaro, ranked number 5, it is Tsh 1,237,761. If read
differently, it is the ‘economically active’ (aged somewhere between 14 and 65) among 1.69 million people
in Arusha and 1.64 million people in Kilimanjaro who contributed to these GDP in their respective
regions. In both cases, they are nearly half since they constitute about 55.1%, according to the report.

Doing such a reading enables one to see that the contribution of
regional GDP to the national GDP is not simply about what region own natural
resources such as mining and touring sites. In the disturbing case of a ‘poor’ country
such as Tanzania that is not benefitting radically from its rich resources, the
‘wealth of the nation’ ought to be a ‘critical mass’ of the relatively healthy and well educated. Perhaps it is better to be happy about the apparent prosperity, that is, if it
is indeed not exploitative and if it is surely releasing the ‘prosperous’ from being a ‘burden to the nation’ thus propelling development in other regions through a
‘trickle down effect’ as they move to, or work in, the relatively less wealthy areas.

Kilimanjaro and Arusha have been pulling ahead since
colonial times not least due to many factors hence what we have been witnessing
since 2001 in terms of the decline
in their contribution to the national GDP is more about the decline in the
sectors associated with natural resources that is not necessarily affecting negatively
the strides and gains in the said prosperity/wealth that their dwellers (and
descendants) have accumulated across time. It is also about some regions ‘catching
up’ and our commercial capital outdoing its ‘colonial heydays’ when Hamza Mwapachu
thus aptly complained in 1950: “Up to now it is everything in Dar es Salaam to the
neglect and expense to the other centers in the territory.”

Visiting our country on the eve of independence,
Kathleen Stahl had this to say in 1961 about the then Northern Province’s ‘heart’ of Kilimanjaro in her colonial(ist) memoir on Tanganyika:
Sail in the Wilderness: “Chaggaland is a yardstick for other parts of
Tanganyika. It represents the highest standard reached in economic prosperity,
in local government, in social development.”

John Iliffe could not agree more in 1979 when he thus
stated in his magnum opus on A
Modern History of Tanganyika: “Regional disparity remained much more striking
than social differentiation…Dr. von Clemm’s study of the Lyamungo area in
Kilimanjaro in 1960-1 provides an illustration…Three homesteads in five had
concrete houses…One object of competition was education, valued almost entirely
in terms of money and power…Branches of the major banks existed on the
mountainside…Western medicine was highly valued…Kilimanjaro was at one end of
the spectrum of Tanganyika’s societies. Close to the other end was Buha [i.e. Kigoma]…[it]
remained a labour reservoir…”

Understandably, Chachage thus followed suit in the 1983
dissertation cited above: “In essence, Moshi town [in Kilimanjaro region] was
by 1960 much more developed commercially and industrially than Arusha town…The
general expectation towards the end of the colonial period was that Moshi town
would develop faster than Arusha town.”

Lest we forget, Chachage also made this poignant observation
in regard to Arusha town ‘overtaking’ Moshi town: “In-migration in Arusha
constituted little more than 1% per year to urban growth during the colonial
period. However, from 1957 to 1967 rural-urban migration played a significant
role in urbanisation…. While during colonial period it was the Wairangi and
other nationalities from the central regions who constituted the biggest percentage,
after independence the trend changed to the extent that Wachagga constitute the
biggest single nationality in town.” That was back in the days when our National Census had ethnicity as a
component.

Questioning tribalism and racism by way of disclaimer
in his dissertation, Chachage nevertheless thus continues with the analysis of those ‘regional dynamics’: “The dominance of the people from Kilimanjaro in Arusha
town is an expression of the fact that with the removal of the fetter imposed
by colonialism, both capitalists and the landless peasants who had emerged in
the more capitalistically developed areas such as Kilimanjaro were able to move
to urban areas. In Kilimanjaro, the capitalists sought to expand their
enterprises, which were constrained by the limitations in land ownership in the
areas and the landless moved to the urban areas to seek for wage employment.
Arusha town, more than Moshi offered the possibility of expansion because most
land was owned by foreigners who were already moving out, as opposed to Moshi;
whereby the expansion of the town itself entailed some form of land alienation
due to the population pressure.”

“The set up and the links that exist between ‘local’ tour operators and foreign ones; and the fact that vertical integration in the industry, to the extent that even Euro Car and other European ground transport companies are well established in the country, makes one conclude that between 75 and 90 percent of money paid for a holiday in Tanzania is either paid in the country of origin of the tourists or leaks out of the country. The major hotels, that have their own ground transport to cater for their clients, work to marginalize the local transport and tour operators. Moreover, as much as 50 to 70 percent of the earnings from hotels and tourism in general go to acquiring imports of goods that the sector demands—mostly exotic imports. The dominant position of the foreign operators means that profits are ploughed back home, leaving very little revenue in the destination country. Package tourism is quite notorious for funneling away tourism revenues... tourists pay for the whole vacation in their home countries bringing only pocket money to buy souvenirs and incidentals.... The country is not only losing money in terms of foreign exchange and leakages, but also in terms the amounts of money it has been compelled to use from taxes and loans for privatization of facilities, sustenance of incentives for investors and creation of infrastructure to service tourism....”

Probably they were anticipating this pertinent
observation that the
journalist Annastazia Freddy made in 2013 when another report came up
with statistics on which region contributes more to the national GDP: “One of
the reasons for the low rank of Arusha in the economy of the country could be
because most tour companies are foreign or Dar es Salaam-based, which means
that most of the money tourists pay for accommodation and travel remains
outside Arusha. “Many tour companies are foreign-owned. In fact this also raises
the question of how the country benefits from the tourist attractions found in
the country if most of the money paid remains outside the country,” a worker at
a Dar es Salam-based travel agency, who requested for anonymity, told The
Citizen yesterday.”

Statistics are not simply collections of facts. They
are both objective and subjective. No wonder Chachage wrote a critique on ‘using
statistics to trick the masses’ that appears in his recently
published eponymous book. We should all be wary of the politics of (regional)
numbers.

Karibu kwenye ulingo wa kutafakari kuhusu tunapotoka,tulipo,tuendako na namna ambavyo tutafika huko tuendako/Welcome to a platform for reflecting on where we are coming from, where we are, where we are going and how we will get there